How to uninstall 3rd party tape drivers from windows that are causing drives to fail with SCSI b (4046258)

Date: June 2010
Product & Version: NVBU 8(all versions affected)
OS Version: Windows
Module & Version:
Application version:



Symptoms:

Netvault Backups fail with the drive going offline reporting s SCSI bus reset within the binary log.
The hardware has been validated.

Experience has shown that 3rd party device drivers intermittently poll the device interrupting NVBU data streams and writes causing scsi bus resets.

3rd party device drivers applied to the tape drives can be identified by checking the windows device manager within "windows computer management"

If no drivers are applied then the tape drive will be listed under the "other devices" section with a question mark ? icon.

If drivers have been loaded for these drives, they will be listed under the tape drive section with an apropriate device name.

The standard method for uninstalling the drivers computer management -> Device Manager -> device -> uninstall
This will remove the named entries, however Windows will reinstall the drivers automatically upon reboot.

To test for this:
Witihin Windows Device manager, select the machine node name at the top of the tree displayed within Device manager, "right click" and select "scan for hardware changes"

If the tape drives revert back to their original driver enabled state then the drivers were automatically reinstalled and the procedure defined below is required.

1 - identify the drivers applied to the tape drive
To identify what driver has been loaded select the device, "right click" and select properties.
The driver tab should list the driver provider.

2 - Unloaded the drivers via windows computer management -> Device Manager -> device -> uninstall

3 - Locate the relevant *.INF and *.PNF files within the directory C:\windows\inf
Open each oem*.INF file within C:\windows\inf check the driver details to see if they match the provider listed for the tape drive

4 - once you have located the correct INF file then move this to another seperate dierctory outside of C:\windows\inf along with the corresponding *.PNF file i.e. OEM21.INF and OEM21.PNF moved to c:\tmp. Also remove the tape.inf and tape.pnf files if listed as well.

5 - execute a scan for hardware changes
Within Windows Device manager select the machine node name at the top of the tree displayed within Device manager, "right click" and select "scan for hardware changes"

6 - Check that the tape drives are listed within windows device manager under the "OTHER devices" section with a question mark ? icon

7 - Remove the library from netvault device management

8 - Reboot the server to allow windows to assign new windows device names for the drives - Otherwise the drives will not show up for addition in NetVault

9 - Once the reboot has completed add the library and the tape drives within the netvault device management GUI